At times I do wind it up for them, but she is very happy to just pull the tail and watch it do its thing. She flips it up in the air and also carries it as if it were a kill - going so far to straddle her front legs as if it were dragging on the ground :)

And a couple of days later the toy was no more. I found it with all the stuffing removed (and strewn all over the bedrooms). The internal mechanism was obviously a great toy as Spot was batting that around for a while until I got tired of the noise and threw it away :)